[edit] There is now a hosted Omnifray forum on this website whichcurrently works on this link viewforum.php?f=100 - there are a few bits and pieces about Omnifray there. Also if you read further down this thread you'll seeMax Bantleman has posted a review here. [/edit]

Would anyone be interested in reviewing my very special new tabletop fantasy RPG Omnifray?

The books should be out VERY soon and I'll be able to get advance copies topotential reviewers in the next 7-14 days by snailmail.

Omnifray is enormously flexible, highly innovative, well-balanced andtrue-to-life. Omnifray is also a challenging game - but I think it's well worth the effort. (Well obviously I WOULD think that...) It's very indie. It's notmeant for pure combat-focused hack-n-slash - the points system usedfor character generation gives a lot of weight to non-combat abilities.All player characters have special abilities (feats of physical energy, concentration,spiritual power - which includes magic - or destiny, or downtime feats)which can only be used finitely, adding an important tactical dimensionto the game. Those special abilities are not limited to combat. There's more blurb on the Omnifray site.

There will be two books:- a Basic Handbook (about 320 pages) and an Expert Manual (about 500 pages), both softback, B&W interior, mostly 9-pointTimes New Roman. Full retail distribution may be delayed for a couple of months but early release versions will be available soon.

To do the game justice, the potential reviewer(s) will need to be people whoaren't scared of a bit of complexity - but the game IS suitable for completenovices to play, provided you have a decent ref who can explain the rules etc.Also it's probably worth just looking at the Basic Handbook first, and leavingthe Expert Manual alone until you've played at least one game.

Last edited by Omnifray on 2:24pm on 21 Dec 08, edited 1 time in total.

Looking for playtesters for the Implodarc Tabletop RPG. If you'd like to playtest it and post public feedback or an AP thread, ask me for the private link to download it, or I can e-mail it to you. At least compared to my usual stuff, it's meant to be simple and quick to play with quick CharGen.

First impressions are I'm gonna need a couple of weeks to get through them for a read, and then a couple of weeks to get a few of us together to try out some of the basics.They look good. Very professional. They'll stack well against other rpgs on any bookshelf in any store. Their thickness and apparent density of text may put off some novices, but then again, they do offer a huge scope of playing experience, so they will attract those looking for a way 'in' to the hobby maybe...

I can understand it may take a while to get through the books...it took me about 4 months just to proof-read them! (I did make somechanges during that process too, which was very annoying.) So I kind of felt I had to mention the page count and font size in my first post...

Having said that, my dad somehow managed to read 24 chapters (out of 27) in less than a week - I think about 4 or 5 days. The missingones were Basic Handbook chapters 11 (Malady and Madness) and 12(pre-genned PCs) and Expert Manual chapter 15 (more pre-genned PCs),basically because they were the last ones to get finished, though if Ihad to pick a favourite part of each book, it would be Chapter 11in the Basic Handbook, and Chapter 4 of the Expert Manual (PactaSunt Servanda).

Looking for playtesters for the Implodarc Tabletop RPG. If you'd like to playtest it and post public feedback or an AP thread, ask me for the private link to download it, or I can e-mail it to you. At least compared to my usual stuff, it's meant to be simple and quick to play with quick CharGen.

Omnifray wrote:Having said that, my dad somehow managed to read 24 chapters (out of 27) in less than a week - I think about 4 or 5 days. The missingones were Basic Handbook chapters 11 (Malady and Madness) and 12(pre-genned PCs) and Expert Manual chapter 15 (more pre-genned PCs),basically because they were the last ones to get finished, though if Ihad to pick a favourite part of each book, it would be Chapter 11in the Basic Handbook, and Chapter 4 of the Expert Manual (PactaSunt Servanda).

Skimmed through for a quick feel of the layout / style of the presentation, picked up a few key facts, mainly relating to what I always pick up on: combat and character gen I'd like to do a fairly in depth review, so will need a couple of run throuhghs with my 'usual suspect' helpers for testing...Shouldn't take that long

As well as the skeletal basics of chargen in Basic Handbook Chapter 2[and some relevant stuff in later chapters - 5, 8, 9], there isa big load of chargen stuff in Expert Manual Chapters 1-4[and some relevant stuff in other chapters - especially 5-9, 12-13]. The stuff in chapters 1 to 4 of the ExpertManual is guidelines, not firm rules, but once you havethat book it's intended to be your main port of call forchargen. The CGP values of ability scores are on the blankcharacter sheets, in brackets.

Combat - apart from chapters 3 (basics) and 8 (advanced)of the Basic Handbook, there's stuff in chapters 5 and 14of the Expert Manual. Chapter 5 has the Four-Tier ActionResolution Table which will be on the game-aids for the advanced game too. Chapter 14 is full of entirely optionalrules and is for masochists really

Looking for playtesters for the Implodarc Tabletop RPG. If you'd like to playtest it and post public feedback or an AP thread, ask me for the private link to download it, or I can e-mail it to you. At least compared to my usual stuff, it's meant to be simple and quick to play with quick CharGen.

Character Gen is IMO a really strong point of the consumed so far book, and is really open ended about how you wanna play it, the combat (although pretty damn lethal) is also fine with 2 slight varients, the one hit to kill (vs mooks) and the slightly different varient against players/major NPC's. The style of Omnifrey is down to the GM so combat can be as (un)important as you like, im loving what i have seen so far, if i had any wish with what to change is that the books were in hardback, which is a very minor niggle

- sadly I don't think it can be done for an A4 bookwith the current printing arrangements. And colourinterior would be prohibitively expensive, both interms of initial outlay on artwork and in terms ofproduction costs.

As for combat, there are more variants later inthe books... hits struck using the basic combatsystem are equivalent to critical hits using theadvanced combat system, so if you're using thecombat system from Basic Handbook Ch. 3, every blow that hits home can do as much damageas a smash to the face. Average jane hits averagejoe with a broadsword and does an expected 67%injury if he's not wearing armour, which would mean a 30% chance of knocking him unconscious and eventually he'll bleed to death if he's not tended to, unless Fate intervenes or he has the Rapid Clotting ability. If you randomise the damage (optional),it would range from [edit] 15% [/edit] to 96% if memory serves.

The other thing is that it was a conscious designchoice to make combat deadly so as to speed upplay, meaning deadlier than it might be from a purely simulationist perspective. This is because of two things mainly. First,if your characters are in armour, that soaks uplots of damage. Average joe swings his longswordat fancy-pants-wearing-but-otherwise-average fredin his full plate armour and great helm and does him an expected 15% damage usingthe basic combat system (randomised to somethinglike 3% to 67%). If you're using the advanced combatsystem and get more modest hits and clear hits, theywould have an expected damage of only 5% and 10%.The second factor in choosing to deadlify combatdeliberately was that most melee-oriented PCs are likelyto have special feats of physical energy, concentrationor destiny which can be used to enhance or resist a singleblow, and affect only that one blow. This inevitably adds a layer of complexity to the combat system so I felt it would be a good idea to speed things up a bit.

The deadliness of combat does have game style implications.If your PC takes 67% injury he'll need to rest for a longtime to recover fully, and suffers real penalties in themeantime, so if you don't have access to magicalhealing (which is quite a specialist thing and hasdrawbacks of its own - and is only in the ExpertManual), the campaign probably shouldn't try to bea pure hack-n-slash-fest - you have to give the PCssomething that they can do when they're still oncrutches!! Of course, weaker opponents may meanthat you're fine, but there's always the risk that theyjust get lucky. On the other hand, if the charactershave magical healing, they can easily handle severalbrutal fights a day over a short period of time, thoughat low levels using that much healing can cause thembig, big problems:- the healer and the injured frontlinerboth use up their energy very quickly - some of whichmay take a long time to get back -, the radianceof the healing magic may be problematic (attractingmalevolent spirits etc.) and less problematicallyyou also have to watch out for the Shrouding (don't healin front of the common folk!).

Last edited by Omnifray on 10:32pm on 20 Jun 08, edited 1 time in total.

Looking for playtesters for the Implodarc Tabletop RPG. If you'd like to playtest it and post public feedback or an AP thread, ask me for the private link to download it, or I can e-mail it to you. At least compared to my usual stuff, it's meant to be simple and quick to play with quick CharGen.

A basic write-up of examples of chargen and combat is in the pipeline.

Looking for playtesters for the Implodarc Tabletop RPG. If you'd like to playtest it and post public feedback or an AP thread, ask me for the private link to download it, or I can e-mail it to you. At least compared to my usual stuff, it's meant to be simple and quick to play with quick CharGen.

Looking for playtesters for the Implodarc Tabletop RPG. If you'd like to playtest it and post public feedback or an AP thread, ask me for the private link to download it, or I can e-mail it to you. At least compared to my usual stuff, it's meant to be simple and quick to play with quick CharGen.

Matt: open apology to you and anyone in the Omnifray crew.I have been patently rubbish at getting the review done.Lots of 'real life (TM)' excuses but all rubbish really

Truth is I like what I've managed to read, but am finding it very hard to get in to as the writing is, what's the polite way to put it, involved?

I've managed to get the core mechanic sussed, it is in fact delightfully simple, but part of my point is illustrated by the fact that it took me several reads to get this

Time has been my main enemy with lots of 'time burgling' stuff going on.

Again, sorry for the lack of a review. I have not forgotten it and will post as soon as I can.

As a potted 'strap line' summary for anyone seeing Omnifray on the shelf / net and wondering about it:It's very, very involved. It takes a lot of work and commitment to get the best out of it, but it has a good core system and presents masses of options to GMs and Players alike in character / story development. Artwork is patchy and does not properly convey the scope and mystery of the setting. And it has a strong setting that you'd be best off using: it's not a very 'portable' game for being applied to other backgrounds.Would I buy it? Yes: there is enough that I can get something worthwhile out of it even if I don't immerse myself in the game world and full system.

Sounds like a good review in the making, I'm glad you find the core mechanic "delightfully simple" and your bottom line of yes you would buy it is obviously welcome! I can certainly accept that if you take the Basic Handbook and Expert Manual together, it is very involved, in the sense that you have to put work and commitment into it to get the best out of it. if the main books themselves are a little involved, did you have a look at the free-to-download preview guide? That sets out a lot of the basics and I did TRY to make it easier to digest.

Well I look forward to reading the finished review! In the meantime may I quote your post on the Omnifray website? I'll probably quote it in full ratherthan cherry-pick, the only question will be where I fit it in on the website.When your full review is up, I'll probably just link to that instead.

Cheers

Matt

Looking for playtesters for the Implodarc Tabletop RPG. If you'd like to playtest it and post public feedback or an AP thread, ask me for the private link to download it, or I can e-mail it to you. At least compared to my usual stuff, it's meant to be simple and quick to play with quick CharGen.

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